TELEGRAM TO L. D. TROTSKY

Written:Written on January 24, 1919Published:First published in 1942 inLenin Miscellany XXXIV.

      Printed from the typewritten copy.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1975,

      Moscow,Volume 44,

      page191a.Translated:Clemens DuttTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive.You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work, as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

Trotsky,Chairman of the Revolutionary Military CouncilKozlov, or present whereabouts

Wilsonis proposing a truce and is calling all the
governments of Russia to a conference. I am afraid he wants to
secure for himself Siberia and part of the south, having
no hope otherwise of keeping anything. In the light of the
capture of Orenburg, Lugansk and Chertkov this
circumstance compels us, inmyopinion, to exert every effort to
capture Rostov, Chelyabinsk and Omsk within a month.
This last is in accordance with our talk. Make a special
check of Vatsetis’s strategy after the capture of Orenburg
and give your opinion. I think you will have to go to
Wilson.[1]

[1]Thisrefers to a proposed conference on the Princes Islands (Sea
of Marmora) with the participation of representatives of all the
governments existing on the territory of Russia to draw up
measures for ending the Civil War. The address to the parties to the
conference was drafted by Woodrow Wilson, President of the
United States. The imperialists started this talk about a conference
in order to halt the advance of the Red Army and, in the event
of the Soviet Government refusing to participate in the
conference, to put the blame on it for the continuation of hostilities.
The Soviet Government unmasked the imperialists who were
posing as “peace-makers”; on February 4, 1919, it issued a radio
statement to the governments of Great Britain, France, Italy, the
United States and Japan agreeing to participate in the conference,
which it intended to use as an international platform to expose
the interventionists. But no reply was forthcoming from the
Entente imperialists. Denikin, Kolchak and other counter–
revolutionary governments still hoped to crush the Soviet Republic
by force of arms, and therefore refused to take part in the
conference, which was never held.